About

Extracting readable content from raw HTML source code is a frequent requirement in data migration, text analysis, and search indexing. A fundamental challenge in this process is the "concatenation error". Naive methods simply delete all characters between angle brackets. This often merges adjacent text nodes when no whitespace exists in the source code (e.g., End</div><div>Start becomes EndStart).

This tool differentiates between inline elements and block-level elements. It converts structural tags like paragraphs, list items, and table rows into line breaks to maintain the document's logical flow. Additionally, it decodes HTML entities (such as   or ©) into their corresponding characters, producing clean, human-readable text ready for processing or storage.

Formulas

The transformation function strip processes the input string S through sequential stages to produce the output T.

T = decode(normalize(removeTags(S)))

Logic for block element handling prevents text merging:

{

if tag ∈ BlockSet ⇒ append \nif tag ∈ VoidSet ⇒ delete contentotherwise ⇒ remove tags only

Reference Data

HTML Entity / Tag	Category	Text Output Conversion	ASCII Value
<p>...</p>	Block Element	Double Newline (\n\n)	10, 10
<br>	Line Break	Single Newline (\n)	10
<span>	Inline Element	No whitespace added	N/A
` `	Entity	Non-breaking Space	160
&	Entity	Ampersand (&)	38
"	Entity	Double Quote (")	34
<	Entity	Less Than (<)	60
<li>	List Item	Newline + Indent	10
<script>	Code Block	Removed completely	N/A
<!-- -->	Comment	Removed completely	N/A

Frequently Asked Questions

No. The parsing logic is purely string-based or utilizes an inert DOMParser context. Javascript inside tags is identified and stripped out before any text rendering occurs, ensuring no malicious code is executed during the extraction process.

Entities like , ©, or & are decoded into their literal Unicode characters. This ensures the output is true plain text, not a mix of text and escape codes.

Strict tabular layout (columns and rows alignment) is lost in plain text. However, this tool converts row endings () into newlines to prevent cell data from running together.

The tool uses browser-native parsing strategies where possible. Most modern browsers are resilient to malformed HTML (e.g., missing closing tags) and will infer the structure to extract text reasonably well.